334 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1960 



sion Inlet, which runs north out of Icy Strait, since the date of a 

 patent survey made in 1909, These changes are unspectacular except 

 when they occur as earthquakes — then the news circuits carry excited 

 tales of events like those of July 9, 1958, at Lituya Bay. Don Miller, 

 of the Geological Survey, and Don Tocher, of the University of Cali- 

 fornia, in a preliniinaiy search of the most accessible reaches of the 

 Fairweather Fault since the 1958 quake, found horizontal displace- 

 ments of 211^ feet accompanied by new escarpments 3i/^ feet high. 

 The land west of the fault moved northwestward, as it does in the case 

 of California's San Andreas, suggesting a kind of grand-scale system 

 at work. These movements may seem dramatic but they are minor 

 compared to the dislocations of the Yakutat Bay earthquake of Sep- 

 tember 10, 1899 — an earlier step in the long series of readjustments 

 going on in the growing Fairweather Range. Yakutat Bay is a story 

 in itself — the subject of extensive field examinations by the Geological 

 Survey in the years foUoAving the shock and of bulky technical re- 

 ports on the findings. The almost unbelievable fact is that the shores 

 of Disenchantment Bay, an upper arm of Yakutat Bay, rose no less 

 than 47 feet 4 inches out of the sea in that convulsion, the greatest 

 known faulting ever to occur in a single quake. Lacking previous 

 tide-gage records in the locality, many kinds of evidence had to be 

 found to verify tliis startling observation, including traces of ele- 

 vated beaches, old high-water marks on the rocks, and telltale effects 

 on the vegetation. The best evidence, found some years after the 

 event, was the remains of dead barnacles far out of the water. Verti- 

 cal measurements between the highest live barnacles to be found and 

 the highest dead barnacle shells proved the point beyond doubt. 

 Wliat a prelude this was to the incredible events of July 9, 1958. 



These events received prompt attention by seismologists, geolo- 

 gists, geodesists, and hydrographers. T. Niel Davis, of the Geo- 

 physical Institute of Alaska, was soon there with a plane for view 

 photography. By July 17 the Coast and Geodetic Survey had Merlin 

 Natto on the scene with Air Photo Mission 701 to investigate topo- 

 graphic changes. The Survey's ship Pathfinder under the command 

 of Ira Eubottom arrived on September 16, en route from a surveying 

 assignment in Bristol Bay, to obtain preliminary soundings of the 

 underwater changes. 



The upheaval of Point Turner, which had swallowed Mrs. Walton 

 and the Tibbies couple so abruptly, saw the utter disappearance of 

 the harbor liglit and of some 100 to 150 feet of the south end of the 

 island, cut off as if by a great cleaver. Compared with surveys made 

 in 1942, 800 feet appeared to be gone, but much of this was probably 

 the effect of erosion of the sandy deposits during the years. At any 

 rate the land upon which the strawberry pickers had stood just before 



